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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26375428">A Painful Truth</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bonding, Falling In Love, Gen, Gratuitously Hot Death, Gratuitously Hot Voldemort, M/M, Magical Bond, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Redemption, Time Travel, Touching</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 07:54:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,538</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26375428</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After his conversation with Dumbledore in not-King’s Cross, Harry wakes up in a world that is not his own. A world in mayhem.</p>
<p>To make an already unfortunate situation worse, Harry’s own magic has gone berserk, and the only solution seems to be binding it to someone with equal, if opposite, power.</p>
<p>It’s just his luck, really, that his only match happens to be Tom Riddle himself. </p>
<p>-</p>
<p>Alternatively: In which Death bows to no one.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Death &amp; Harry Potter, Death/Harry Potter, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Harry Potter/Voldemort</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>235</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. I.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry was lying curled on his side, nose pressed to the moss and leaf-covered ground. The hinge of his glasses cut into his skin. As he inhaled, the scent of the forest—fresh and earthy—permeated his nostrils. This was somehow surprising. He’d been expecting something more… rotten. Scorching, maybe. Death wasn’t supposed to smell pleasant, was it?</p>
<p>His entire body ached, but his chest was the worst. Painful spasms rippled across it periodically, and he had to clench his jaw to keep from making a sound. He kept his eyes shut.</p>
<p>This was what it felt like to be hit with the Killing Curse, then. It felt like he’d been punched with an iron fist, like his ribs had caved in and his lungs had collapsed. He struggled for air. Harry had always been told it was painless—like you were already gone before you even knew what had happened. Why had he never questioned that no one could really know what it felt like to be hit with the Killing Curse because no one else had ever survived to tell the tale? He had some choice words for those who speculated.</p>
<p>After a dizzying moment of complete silence, Harry finally realized what he had been waiting for. What he’d been listening for.</p>
<p>Cheers. Triumphant hurrahs, maybe even applause. Any acknowledgement at all of his ‘death’. But there was nothing. No rustling in the undergrowth, no quiet murmurs, not even a whisper of a breath.</p>
<p>There was only silence.</p>
<p>Harry’s heart thudded in the confines of his ribcage—irrefutable proof that he was <em>alive</em>—and he feared anyone in the clearing would be able to hear it in the impossible quiet.</p>
<p>What was happening? Why was there no noise? The hysterical thought that maybe he’d gone deaf—cheating death had to have <em>some</em> sort of consequence, hadn’t it?—made his limbs lock up and his breath catch in his throat.</p>
<p>Oh god, he needed to <em>breathe</em>.</p>
<p>After a couple minutes of careful breaths and complete stillness, Harry opened his eyes. To slits at first, but wider when he only saw trees and foliage in front of him. Everything surrounding him was motionless, even the very air it seemed. As if he was inside a bubble that even nature’s own elements couldn’t penetrate.</p>
<p>He was alone.</p>
<p>It wasn’t a fully-formed thought, merely a whisper of a suspicion, and yet he knew it to be true.</p>
<p>Harry was alone.</p>
<p>Even so, he turned over with extreme caution, his hand gripping the hilt of the wand that had been digging into his side.</p>
<p>Moonlight illuminated the clearing, casting non-threatening shadows. Around him, the forest was tranquil. No Death Eaters disrupted the peace.</p>
<p>No Voldemort.</p>
<p>Harry pushed himself to his feet through sheer will and determination, ignoring the pangs that shot through his limbs and the way his body protested every movement.</p>
<p>It took a few moments for him to orient himself, but eventually he found a path through the undergrowth that he thought looked familiar, and he followed it back to the castle, his mind racing.</p>
<p>What had happened? Was the battle already over? Had he missed it?</p>
<p>… Did they win?</p>
<p>When Harry came to the edge of the forest, he stopped and felt his stomach drop. The castle was before him, in shambles. Even as it still stood, many of its mighty walls had tumbled down. Rubble littered the ground, great big stone and pebbles alike. No light came from inside, no sign that his home from since he was eleven years old was anything but destroyed.</p>
<p>His breath hitched, and when he licked his lips he tasted salt. He was crying.</p>
<p>The tears fell in slow rivulets down his cheeks, causing his nose to run and his lips to tremble. It was all he could do to choke back the sobs that threatened in the back of his throat.</p>
<p>He did not fall to his knees—no matter how much he wanted to, no matter how much he longed to give in and give up—and some self-preservation instinct he hadn’t realized still functioned made him pull out his Invisibility Cloak from his pocket and wrap it tightly around his shaking form.</p>
<p>Every step towards the ruined castle was slow, each one dragging a little bit more than the last. It felt like hours before he came upon the steps leading to the Entrance Hall—for all he knew, it was.</p>
<p>It required great mental preparation and absolute resolve for him to take that first step… and one step was all he was granted before a voice from behind him spoke up.</p>
<p>“You don’t want to go in there.”</p>
<p>Harry startled so badly that he almost tripped trying to whip around, his heart leaping into his throat. By some miracle he stayed standing, as if assisted by an invisible force, and came face-to-face with the intruder.</p>
<p>His eyes went wide.</p>
<p>If a physically perfect human could exist, he was sure that the man who stood before him was as close as humanity was ever likely to get.</p>
<p>The first thing Harry noticed were his electric blue eyes, staring right at him, as icy as the arctic and glowing as if they were their own source of light. The next was his hair, white as snow but gleaming silver in the moonlight. Harry’s eyes took in everything, from his perfectly symmetrical nose, to his high cheekbones, to his pale skin, to his sharp jawline.</p>
<p>He was tall, standing centimeters above Harry, his shoulders broad, his hands resting casually in his trouser pockets, and his stance utterly relaxed.</p>
<p>Harry swallowed, the bobbing of his throat borderline painful.</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>The man lifted an eyebrow white as his hair. His face was unreadable. He said nothing.</p>
<p>Harry blinked, his eyebrows scrunching together. His jaw worked but his mind was tired, and all he really wanted to know was, “You can see me?”</p>
<p>The man—the figment of his imagination, the <em>ghost</em>—did not seem inclined to answer his questions. Instead, he said in a voice deep and melodic, “There’s nothing for you in there, Harry.”</p>
<p>Harry tilted his head and was once more captured by those alluring eyes, so bright in the darkness. “Who are you?” he whispered, so softly he barely heard the words himself.</p>
<p>Finally some emotion manifested on that pretty face as the man’s lips twitched up in a barely perceptible smirk. And for a moment, Harry had the uncanny impression that he was being taunted.</p>
<p>But then the man’s smirk disappeared, and he said, with absolutely no inflection at all, “You may call me Axel.”</p>
<p>“<em>Axel</em>?”</p>
<p>Harry didn’t know what he’d been expecting. Something grander, maybe, something shocking. Something that would explain his presence, that would tell Harry how he could see him even through an Invisibility Cloak that had never failed him before.</p>
<p><em>Axel</em> sounded like a lie.</p>
<p>If the man—Axel<em>, </em>apparently—could sense Harry’s inner turmoil, he gave no indication of it. He merely hummed in affirmation.</p>
<p>So Harry asked the next question that seemed most logical. “Do you know what happened?”</p>
<p>Axel tilted his head to the side very slightly, only a few degrees, his eyes—so captivating, so <em>bewitching</em>—slowly appraising Harry, traveling from his head over his rumpled, dirty, oversized clothes down to his worn sneakers and back up again. His intense gaze sent a shiver rippling down Harry’s spine, and again Harry wondered how he could see him.</p>
<p>“You must be tired, Harry,” Axel said once his eyes met Harry’s again.</p>
<p>The gentle emphasis on Harry’s name was a shock to his system. That was twice now that Axel had used his name. Rationally, Harry knew that he was recognized all the time—if people didn’t already know his face from all the papers, then his scar inevitably gave it away. He fought the urge to pat down his hair and hide his scar. He had a feeling it would do less than nothing to shield him from Axel’s penetrating gaze.</p>
<p>But how could his name fall so easily from an ostensible stranger’s lips? So smooth and… familiar. Intimate.</p>
<p>Something inside his gut twisted uncomfortably at the thought, and Harry was too drained, physically and emotionally, to make out the feeling.</p>
<p>“How do you know me?”</p>
<p>A glint of amusement flashed through those piercing eyes, Harry was sure of it. “So many questions,” Axel drawled, his voice lilting and shockingly pleasant to Harry’s ears.</p>
<p>“I think they’re warranted.”</p>
<p>Axel stared at him for a long moment, so unnaturally still he could have been mistaken for a statue. And maybe that was what he was—it would explain his inhumanly perfect attributes. Maybe Harry’s dying had lost him some of his sense and now had him conversing with statues that may or may not have been talking back. How could he know? It felt like his entire world had been upended, perhaps lost to him for good, and he was just so exhausted it wouldn’t surprise him that he wasn’t thinking straight.</p>
<p>“You should rest.”</p>
<p>“I’m not tired,” was his immediate response, blatant lie that it was.</p>
<p>“I think you are.”</p>
<p>It rankled him, how familiar this stranger was with him. Axel did not know him, could not possibly guess what Harry was feeling right now. For Merlin’s sake, Harry hardly knew himself!</p>
<p>“And where should I sleep, exactly, if I can’t go in the castle?” Harry demanded snidely, because he was weary and it was in his very nature to be difficult.</p>
<p>But if Harry’s attitude irked him, Axel didn’t show it. He merely held out a hand that Harry could do very little but stare at dumbly.</p>
<p>His fingers were long, and Harry didn’t know why he fixated on this detail, but suddenly all Harry wanted to know was whether or not he played the piano. That was what people with long, nimble fingers did, right? They played the piano. Or maybe they were painters? Harry didn’t know.</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>By now, he’d learned not to expect an answer from his questions. That didn’t make him anymore prepared for what Axel did next, however.</p>
<p>Those long fingers wrapped themselves around Harry’s forearm—startlingly cold, like a block of ice locked around his arm—and while their grip wasn’t quite tight, he knew he’d experience little to no success in trying to pry them off.</p>
<p>He’d endured side-along apparition many times over the past few months, but never had it felt like this. It was so smooth, so effortless, outside the castle one moment, in front of a small house the next.</p>
<p>It had been a silent arrival, no tell-tale <em>crack</em> that Harry was so used to. No feeling of being compressed, like being forced through a very tight rubber tube. The only indication that Harry had moved at all was the slight displacement of the air around him.</p>
<p>Harry blinked rapidly, anticipating a wave of nausea that never came. He frowned and then looked around their new surroundings. The house—that actually appeared to be more of a small cottage—was situated at the end of a long line of neighboring houses. Across the street sat even more houses of all shapes, colors, and sizes.</p>
<p>It was unsettling to notice that some of the houses had been damaged, others wrecked beyond repair. Walls had been felled, roofs caved in, people’s homes demolished. The neighborhood showed signs of desertion, the street dark.</p>
<p>His skin crawled with uneasiness. “Where are we?” he asked, although he had a gut feeling he already knew.</p>
<p>“Hogsmeade,” Axel replied, and if he wasn’t so disheartened that his hunch had been correct, Harry might have been gratified that one of his questions had finally been answered honestly.</p>
<p>Axel kept his grip on Harry’s arm and led him up a set of groaning, wooden stairs. The porch was in a state of disrepair when they reached it, dirt and mold wedging into crevices, broken pottery and debris littering the space in front of the door.</p>
<p>“You live here?” Harry asked skeptically.</p>
<p>Axel, predictably, ignored him, waving the hand not holding Harry, and the grimy front door opened without protest, creaking on its rusted hinges.</p>
<p>‘Knows wandless, non-verbal magic.’ Harry added that to his mental folder of what he knew about Axel, along with ‘abnormally long fingers’ and ‘frustratingly reticent.’</p>
<p>He was led into the cottage by an unrelenting tug. It was dark inside the cottage once the door had fallen shut behind them, and Harry feared he would stumble on something as they made their way further into its interior. But Axel led him true—either he had been here many times before or he could see in the dark, and Harry wasn’t sure which option would have comforted him more.</p>
<p>They came to a steady stop, and Harry heard the click and swish of a door opening. Inside the room, a candle on top of a nightstand flickered to life to reveal a small bedroom. Not much resided inside the room but a tiny cot posing as a bed, the nightstand, and a curiously ornate armoire that looked out of place inside the otherwise monotonous room.</p>
<p>Axel guided him into the room and over to the bed. Once he relaxed his grip on Harry’s forearm, Harry’s knees immediately gave out, making him sag onto the bed. A sound of shock left his lips unintentionally.</p>
<p>“Rest.”</p>
<p>Harry’s head shot up from where it was slumping to his chest. “But I—”</p>
<p>“Shh.” One long, ice cold finger pressed to his lips, cutting off his words and shutting off his brain.</p>
<p>Harry was out before his head even hit the pillow.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. II.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Raindrops pelted his skin like nails of ice, creating shivers that racked through his entire body. His coat was sodden with cold water, heavy on his scrawny frame. Again and again, he had to blink droplets out of his eyes only for great gusts of wind to blind him again.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“We need shelter!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He barely heard the words over the roar of the river beside them.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“How do we get across?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The river was deep, the waters treacherous. Waves crashed into the sides, sending sprays of water up over the edges. They would be foolish to make an attempt at wading across.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Think.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He needed to think.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The gale howled an unearthly cry, winding around and through his limbs, splaying his fingers open like a deliberate force. A magnificent blast of wind sent a long stick of holly flying from his pocket, whisking it to the rain-soaked soil.</em>
</p><p><em>Echoes of laughter sang in his ear. </em>Magic, darling, <em>it almost seemed to croon.</em> That is what it’s there for.</p><p>
  <em>He stared at his wand. His eyes widened.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“We build a bridge.”</em>
</p><p>—</p><p>Harry groaned, reluctant as consciousness dragged him out of the lure of sleep. His head pounded like his skull was being pummeled into, over and over again. Bright light streamed in through a window, discernible even through his closed eyelids and only serving to make his throbbing head ache worse.</p><p>With an exasperated huff, Harry pulled his pillow over his head, pressing his face into the mattress underneath. He breathed in relief at the blessed darkness.</p><p>Then, after a single moment of serenity, it occurred to him that he hadn’t had a real mattress to sleep on in quite some time. Harry’s eyes flew open and he shot up, spectacles dangling off one ear.</p><p>Where the hell was he?</p><p>Disorientated, Harry took several moments to place where he was and how he’d suddenly come to have a bed. Where were Ron and Hermione? His head felt so heavy, his mind foggy.</p><p>Slowly, one second at a time, bits and pieces of the day before came back to him. The battle. Voldemort. The Killing Curse. Dumbledore.</p><p>Axel.</p><p><em>Axel.</em> Had he been a dream? But no, this room had been the one Axel had led him into the night before, he was sure of it. There was the nightstand with the candle, unlit now. And there was that peculiar armoire he’d taken note of yesterday. In the sunlight, its gilded edges shone brightly.</p><p>Harry righted his glasses before standing, brushing out the clothes he’d slept in. They were terribly worn and dirty. His skin felt grimy all over. He’d give his left arm for a shower right now but would settle for a cleaning charm. At that thought, he patted himself down, searching his pockets for his wand.</p><p>He didn’t find it.</p><p>Slightly panicked now, Harry ruffled through his pockets again, in the unlikely event that he’d somehow missed it the first time. This only succeeded in making him realize his mokeskin pouch had also gone missing, along with his Invisibility Cloak.</p><p><em>Bloody hell</em>, that great git had <em>stolen </em>his things! Why had Harry trusted him? What could have possibly been going through his head that he would voluntarily go into a strange cottage he’d never seen before with a strange man he’d never met? <em>Stupid</em>.</p><p>But he knew why. The promise of <em>rest</em> had been a greater temptation than the threat of a stranger had been a warning.</p><p>He tried to jump to his feet but fatigue made his limbs slow and his head dizzy. With a hand on the nightstand to steady him, he righted himself and marched to the door, flinging it open.</p><p>Somehow, he’d expected what lay outside to be wrecked and abandoned. But the cottage was neat and uncluttered. There only seemed to be two other rooms inside—a kitchen and a sitting room, both of which were clean and undamaged, looking almost exactly like one would expect the inside of a small cottage to look like.</p><p>Harry’s eyebrows scrunched together. Why had he expected a disaster?</p><p>“Awake, finally?”</p><p>Harry startled, head snapping in the direction the voice had come from. He stared. “You.”</p><p>Axel was lounging on an absurdly overstuffed couch that looked fit to pop. He wore a gray suit that clung flatteringly to his tall frame and fancy, wingtip dress shoes that were propped up on the coffee table in front of the couch. He was reading a book.</p><p>“Me,” he said. He did not even bother to look up.</p><p>The frown that marred Harry’s face then felt absolutely justified but was hard to maintain. He sighed, not awake enough to get wound up. “Where’s my wand?”</p><p>Without missing a beat, Axel asked, “Where did you see it last?”</p><p>Harry’s temper spiked, and suddenly he was revitalized. His hands clenched to fists at his sides when he caught the small, barely distinguishable smirk that lightened Axel’s handsome face. “I know you took it.”</p><p>“Oh?” Finally, Axel looked up. “It isn’t really <em>your </em>wand, is it?”</p><p>The question caught him off guard. How could Axel know that the hawthorn wand Harry had taken from Draco Malfoy had not actually originally belonged to him? He gritted his teeth, not bothering to deny it. “I disarmed him.”</p><p>Axel did not seem to need clarification. “Ah, I see. So you <em>took it</em> from him, ergo it belonged to you. I took it from you, ergo it now belongs to me.”</p><p>“That— That’s not how that works!” Harry cried, although even he could hear the uncertainty in his words. He wished for Hermione. She would know for sure.</p><p>Axel hummed noncommittally. “I suppose not,” he said. “Pity.”</p><p>Harry was bewildered by his indifference. What did he want with Malfoy’s wand, anyway? “So give it back,” he demanded when it became clear Axel would do nothing more than stare at him with unnerving intensity.</p><p>The most shocking thing about that morning might have been that he actually acquiesced. Harry could only blink in incredulity as Axel set aside his book and pulled out not one, but two wands from the inside pocket of his blazer. The first was the creamy-brown wood of hawthorn, the second…</p><p>Holly. Eleven inches. Presumably phoenix feather core, though Harry couldn’t know for sure as the wood was whole. It wasn’t snapped in half like it had been when Harry had put it inside his mokeskin pouch, only held together by the thread of a feather. It had been mended.</p><p>Harry gasped. “How…?”</p><p>Axel said nothing as he shifted his feet to the floor and laid the wands out, side-by-side, atop the coffee table.</p><p>“Ollivander said it would be impossible to repair it,” Harry whispered for lack of anything better. He wouldn’t let himself say <em>thank you</em>. Not yet, at least.</p><p>“Well, he is the expert,” Axel drawled, apparently keeping with the standard of telling Harry absolutely nothing. At the moment, Harry didn’t really mind.</p><p>“Can I…?” he asked hesitantly, creeping forward like he would if he’d been approaching a stag.</p><p>Axel leaned back. “Do you want it?”</p><p>To Harry’s ears, this sounded very much like a trick question. He nodded anyway.</p><p>“Then take it.”</p><p>And Harry did.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Death is such a menace, who would have thought?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. III.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The wood was warm and familiar in the palm of his hand. It seemed to settle there, vibrating like a purring cat, and he was probably just imagining it, but he didn’t care. It was his wand. Whole and undamaged. And probably just about the only thing that could have drawn his mind away from his current predicament for even a few moments.</p><p>Harry turned the wand on his clothes, pressing the tip to his rumpled, filthy shirt.</p><p>“Perhaps you shouldn’t—”</p><p>“<em>Scourgify</em>.”</p><p>A loud <em>bang</em> followed the incantation, his wand jerking in his hand and shooting sparks from the tip. Harry immediately dropped it and jumped back, alarmed and half-convinced he was under attack. But then a more pressing concern caught his eye, blazing red and orange and smoking slightly. His eyes widened.</p><p>He was <em>on fire</em>.</p><p>“<em>Shit!</em>”</p><p>Without much thought, Harry began beating at the flames, his panic overtaking any rational thought. He cried out when this action only succeeded in setting fire to the sleeve of his shirt and began inanely waving his arm about, because surely that would help.</p><p>“<em>Aguamenti!</em>”</p><p>The flames were doused almost instantly, leaving his shirt charred, steaming, and even more destroyed than it had been to begin with.</p><p>“What the <em>hell?</em>” Harry stared dumbfounded at his wand, lying innocently on the floor like it hadn’t just set him on fire. His gaze flickered up, and he found Axel standing up now, calmly rolling the hawthorn wand between his fingertips.</p><p>“You’re welcome.”</p><p>Harry ignored this as a crippling thought occurred to him. What other explanation could there really be? “It doesn’t answer to me anymore?”</p><p>The words were spoken softly, and he hated how his voice trembled. Like he was about to cry.</p><p>“Don’t be so dramatic.” Axel blatantly rolled his eyes—which Harry thought was rather unfair, really—before tucking the hawthorn wand back into his jacket. “It’s happening to everyone.”</p><p>“Not to you,” Harry felt the need to point out, pointedly looking at the place Axel had just slipped the hawthorn wand back into. The relief he felt was very real, but he’d be damned if he was going to admit the words of this particular stranger could soothe him.</p><p>“I’m hardly everyone, Harry,” Axel said nonsensically. “I’m special.”</p><p>Harry could only stare at him, unable to keep his frustration from boiling over. “<em>What does that even mean?</em>”</p><p>But Axel apparently wasn’t feeling the need to be helpful—nothing new there—switching the subject without even trying to be subtle about it, the wanker. “If you want to shower, there’s a bathroom beside the bedroom.”</p><p>Harry frowned and thought long and hard about whether he wanted to press the issue. But the promise of a shower called to him, and if he was going to have any success at tackling the issue at hand—where he was, what had happened, his wand, Axel, or all of it, he wasn’t really sure—he wanted to feel clean and put together. Still, he couldn’t help but hesitate. “I don’t have anything I can change into.”</p><p>“I’ll get you something.”</p><p>Harry wanted to ask but quickly decided it wouldn’t be worth the effort. Axel wouldn’t answer him anyway.</p><p>So he turned around and saw that, sure enough, there was a door beside the one he’d just come out of. After he’d entered the bathroom, he firmly shut it behind him, dismayed to find there was no lock on the knob. It was unlikely that that would’ve stopped Axel from coming in if he really wanted to, but it would’ve made Harry feel better regardless.</p><p>He removed his glasses and stripped out of his shabby clothes, shucking them to the floor without much care and climbing into the tub, pulling shut the shower curtains.</p><p>The water, which took an age and a half to heat up, felt like a blessing on his skin as it cascaded down over his body. It washed away layer after layer of grime that had accumulated over the long months on the run. He scrubbed and scrubbed with the soap, going over every inch of flesh—behind his ears, between his fingers and toes, the crook of his elbows and the backs of his knees—reveling in the scent of the soap, the heat of the water. How had he ever taken this for granted?</p><p>He massaged shampoo into his mop of hair, letting himself enjoy the way his fingers caressed his scalp.</p><p>After rinsing, he stood in the spray, just feeling the water wash over him. He stared unseeingly, feeling simultaneously like a huge weight had just been lifted from his shoulders and like the world he used to know—the world he’d fought so hard for—had been forever ripped from his fingertips.</p><p>A painful lump grew in his throat, one too big to swallow, and his shoulders slumped. He dipped his head and closed his eyes, pretending the tears that started trickling down his cheeks were nothing more than shower water. And if silent sobs racked his body and made his shoulders tremble, who would ever know but him?</p><p>A knock startled him from his melancholy, just in time to haul him back before he could tumble into a pit of despair. He snorted quietly at the thought that this might have been on purpose. It wasn’t like Axel could have any idea how miserable he was feeling. He’d made sure to keep his grief quiet, after all.</p><p>He took a long moment to compose himself, and after a couple of difficult swallows, he called out, “Come in.”</p><p>It was a second before he heard the door open, like Axel had hesitated. Harry dreaded the possibility that he suspected something, had heard something in Harry’s voice that would have given away his anguish.</p><p>But if that <em>was</em> the case, Harry may never know, as Axel made no mention of it. “The clothes are on the counter. I brought you towels as well.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Harry said, his voice stronger now. It was almost enough to fool himself.</p><p>Axel only hummed in acknowledgement, and there was a long moment of silence where Harry wondered if he was meant to say something else. But then he heard a click as the door shut, and he was finally able to exhale the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>poor harry :(</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>let me know your thoughts and if you think i should continue!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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